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They sat without speaking for a little while, Stella once more turning to the fire. Hillyard watching her wistful face and the droop of her shoulders understood at last the truth of Hardiman's description. The mask was lain aside. Here indeed was a Lady of Sorrows. Stella Croyle was silent until she was quite sure that she had once more the mastery of her voice.
"You are!" he cried eagerly. "Of course." He stood poising the letter in the palm of his open hand. The thought of Stella Croyle bade him post it. The presence of Joan Whitworth, and he was so conscious of her, paralysed his arm. Some vague sense of the tumult within him passed out from him to her.
Your Wub!" she cried in a heat. "Yes, I am only twenty, and probably I am quite wrong and stupid. But it seems to me horrible that we two women should be wrangling over a man neither of us had met a week ago. I'll have no more of it." She flung towards the window, but Stella Croyle cried out, "A week ago!" and the cry brought her to a stop. Joan turned and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Croyle.
Croyle was in the habit of using for her toilet. She accordingly returned to Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, and to her surprise found it empty. She waited for a quarter of an hour, and then becoming uneasy, went downstairs into the hall. She heard her mistress and some one else talking in the library. Their voices were raised a little as though they were quarrelling. "Quarrelling!"
"In court?" she faltered. "What do you mean?" "That Mrs. Croyle died of poison last night in her room," answered Jenny. Joan stared at her. "Last night, after we had talked she killed herself oh!" The truth reached her brain and laid a chill hand upon her heart. She rocked backwards and forwards as she stood, and with a gasping moan fell headlong to the ground. She had fainted.
Stella Croyle looked at him curiously. "You too! You have joined up?" Hillyard shook his head. "No good," he answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am turned down and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's friends have gone."
"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus to be disposed of. "Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together. "Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!" "She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing his.
He had the noise of a Babel of tongues and the glitter of a thousand lights upon his left hand; upon his right, the stars burning bright in a cool gloom of deepest purple, and far below the riding-lamps of the yachts tossing on the water like yellow flowers in a garden; whilst next to him, midway between the fragrant darkness and the hard glitter, revealing, as she always did, a kinship with each of them, sat Stella Croyle.
"Mario Escobar." Joan repeated the name with such a violence of scorn that for a moment Stella Croyle was silenced. "Mario Escobar!" "He was here with you a moment ago." Joan answered quietly and quite distinctly: "I wish he were dead!" Stella Croyle fell back upon her first declaration. "You must leave my Wub alone." Joan laughed aloud, harshly and without any merriment.
Her anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere fact that he had lied to her, but from her fancy that he had joined the imaginary band of her enemies. She understood now that in this she had been wrong. "I see," she said gently. "It was to spare me pain?" "Yes." Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed and with triumph. She showed to Hillyard a face from which all the anger had gone.
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